footprint

About Ant Parker

We strongly believe that building citations is essential for any business looking to target locally based customers. Along with helping to increase rankings in relevant Google Maps (and general search results), the offer the following benefits for businesses of all size.

Trusted sources of location information

Help to create an excellent link profile (links back to your website)

Form a key component of an impressive review profile (lots of destinations for customers to provide independent reviews)

Drive customers to your website

One of the most important ways that citations can help to benefit a business is by increasing the chances of local customers find your business online. These will include third-party sites that people use, like Google Maps, Yell, Yelp, FreeIndex, Yelp, Thomson Local and Foursquare to name just a few.

How Can We Help?

Setting up or claiming existing citations (some directories may actually create a listing for you!) is just the beginning of the process. We will make sure that you squeeze every last drop of potential out of each and every listing.

We will do this by completing the following steps:

Making sure that all of the information listed on your account is accurate, relevant and verified

Flesh out your listing with as many relevant details as possible

Make sure there are no duplicate listings which may prove harmful in the future

We would actively seek to encourage customer reviews. For example if you have an e-mail database for current and past customers, we will contact them on your behalf with links to your listing and a guide for the best and quickest way to leave a review

Keep your listings up to date

Getting In Touch

The above information is designed to offer a guide towards maximising the exposure and potential of your citation portfolio. There are also of course additional factors which must be taken into consideration. If you would like Footprint Web Design to help optimise your Google Maps listing, simply give us a call today on Tel. No. +44(0)1883 372488.

Currently Browsing: 4 Reasons Why Building Citations Is Important

One of our most commonly received questions relates to what actually is SEO? Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO to use its more common name) is the process of ensuring that your website is as ‘search engine friendly’ as possible.

All major search engines work by providing results based on the searches from a web user. These results take the form of web pages and other content such as videos or local listings which are shown in an order based upon what the search engine considers to be most relevant to the person making the search. Effective SEO can be used to tap into these results.

What Is The Goal of SEO?

Ultimately, the goal of SEO is to help bring as many visitors to your website is possible. By making your website is easy as possible for search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc) to read, the online visibility of your website will increase. This in turn will help to ensure that more people can find your website via the search results for related terms. As the number of terms your website appears in search results for increases, the number of visitors is likely to increase and as a by product of this, the potential of web visitors to become paying customers will increase as well.

How Does SEO Work?

The days of simplified SEO techniques (such as just targeting certain key words) are now long gone. With Google’s ranking algorithm looking at every aspect of a website, it is essential that no stone is left unturned.

A variety of techniques must be utilised to help ensure that your website maximises its potential and some of these areas can be found below:

Coding

Page Loading Speed

Site Maintenance

Image Optimisation

Key Word Targeting

Social Media

Citations

There are many other factors to consider but this offers a look into just how varied the areas which must be addresses.

If you have any other questions about SEO, please feel free to contact us to see how we can help improve the trust and friendliness of your website in Google’s eyes.

Contact Us

Footprint specialise in providing SEO services which are designed to help take your business to another level. We have been providing SEO Surrey since 1998 and if you’d like to speak to us regarding any of our services, give us a call on 01883 372488, via e-mail info@footprint.co.uk or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.

Currently Browsing: What Actually Is SEO?

Citations (online directory listings) play a hugely important role in any online marketing campaign. Not only do they help to provide respected areas of confirmation for your business details, they also offer new pathways for potential customers to find your business details.

A key part of these citations relates to the NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) of a business but what happens if your company doesn’t tick the traditional boxes of having a physical location where customers can visit you? If this is the case, publishing your address to would-be customers could be an issue.

Why Would You Want To Hide Your Address?

For many businesses with a physical location such as an office or shop, the ability for customers to find them can be crucial. However for other businesses, a driving school for example, that provide their services at other locations, this is not the case.

Our experience tells us that there are typically 5 reasons why a business owner may not want their address published. These are as follows:

Because they do not serve customers at their location, they don’t want people visiting their business address.

Their office address is a virtual office. This would mean customers would be unable to drop in.

Certain businesses (therapists and counsellors) may be considered to be a little sensitive and unsolicited visitors could be an issue

They work from home and are concerned that this may not create the impression that they are looking for

Although they are based in a particular location, they may wish to target a completely different area.

Does Hiding Your Business Address Limit Local Ranking Potential?

It’s impossible to get away from the fact it can impact your ranking potential. Web users want the ability to access genuine local results and Google wants you to be happy so you that you will keep using your services.

Google strives to serve up businesses which it thinks are high quality and that are local. If you hide your address you make it much harder for Google to determine if you are a genuine local business.

We Can Help

Should you find yourself in this particular position, give the Footprint team a call today on Tel. No. 01883 372488 today to see how we can help you.

Currently Browsing: Will Not Promoting My Business Address Harm My Ranking Potential?

By Ant Parker| 2017-11-17T12:31:00+00:00 December 15th, 2017|Uncategorized|Comments Off on Will Not Promoting My Business Address Harm My Ranking Potential?

We understand just how important the reputation of your business is to you. Both in regards of helping to grow your business and also for your own personal pride, the reputation of your business can prove to be one of your most powerful assets or one of your biggest liabilities depending on how positive it is.

With potential customers placing more importance on reviews than ever before, especially if they are new to your products and services, this is an area of your business which must not be overlooked.

Building Your Online Profile

Your ‘Google My Business’ profile (which helps to generate your listing on Google Maps) is arguably the most important online profile you can establish for your business. This is in no small part due to to the fact that when someone takes the time to leave a review, it will be displayed in Google’s search results. This can be extremely positive but what should you do if someone decides to leave you a poor review?

Don’t Overreact!

The first and most important bit of advice we give is to not overreact! Whilst we the receipt of a bad review can seem to be quite personal, the facts are that so long as you don’t receive too many, a bad review is not the end of the world. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that many customers are believed to be mistrustful of businesses that have flawless 5* ratings – as it can be difficult to believe that anyone is really that good! As such, a small number of poor reviews can actually add an air of realism to your profile.

Please do not resort to drastic steps such as deleting your account, changing all of your details or setting up brand new profiles. Establishing an effective online presence can be tricky enough once, never mind twice!

Always Respond To The Review

Always take the time to respond to a negative review but just importantly, always remember to ‘take the high road’ wherever possible. However tempting it may be to give people a piece of your mind, this is very unlikely to be constructive and is very likely to damage your reputation far more than the review will. Just as the review can be viewed by everyone, so can your response.

It’s really important to answer in a professional way. If you feel that an apology is necessary, then by all means include one in your response. Try and provide some type of context to the original review as a benefit for future readers and wherever possible, encourage whoever left the review to continue the conversation privately (via phone, e-mail, DM etc) in an effort to resolve the situation rather than continuing the conversation in public.

Use The Review To Help You Improve

Whilst it is not certain that all negative reviews will be warranted, it is possible that they have some merit. Can you use the negative comments as a way to improve your service? If similar comments keep appearing from different people, perhaps a particular area of your business could do with refining. It’s important to keep a level of perspective and whilst we fully understand that no-one will ever enjoy receiving a poor review, don’t worry too much if one appears on your profile.

Need Some More Help

Would like to find out more about dealing with poor reviews? Give the Footprint Web Design team a call on Tel. No. 01883 372488 today.

Currently Browsing: What Should You Do If Someone Leaves You a Bad Review?

By Ant Parker| 2017-11-16T12:57:43+00:00 December 8th, 2017|Reviews|Comments Off on What Should You Do If Someone Leaves You a Bad Review?

There is still a school of thought that SEO is just for big companies who are looking to get bigger. Whilst SEO can certainly help any company wishing to maximise their online presence, the truth is that it can be at least as beneficial any small business or start up companies who are trying to get a foothold in their market sector.

Every business owner should have the goal of reaching page one on Google search results for terms relating to their products and services. The importance of being discoverable on the Internet cannot be overstated and whilst it will take a little time and some hard work to get there, the benefits for all small businesses greatly outweigh any negatives that you may come across.

If It’s Going To Be Done, Do It Right!!

One of the most common misconceptions regarding the implementation of SEO for a small business relates to expense. The most important thing to remember is that when SEO is done correctly, it is an investment, not an expense.

Unlike some traditional methods of advertising such as newspaper adverts or flyers, whilst an organic and well-planned SEO strategy can take a period of time to put into place, once the results start to come in, there is no upper limit to how great your ROI may become.

Depending on the type of business you run, the implementation of SEO does not have to cost a small fortune. Even small businesses which have a limited marketing budget will get effective help from SEO when it comes to increasing their visibility, rankings and more importantly, leads.

The Positive Impact of SEO

An increased level of online presence can result in:

Increased conversion rates (customers spending more money!!)

Creating increased trust with your clients

Advertising the keeps on giving (unlike some forms of advertising such as leaflet and newspaper advertising, SEO is designed to keep on giving)

Increased feedback (the ability to leave reviews can be key in opening lines of communication with your customers)

External Factors

There are a variety of external factors which are likely to determine just how difficult it will be to achieve a good ranking for a website and these factors are likely to vary greatly from business to business and sector to sector.

Although some competitive industries may require a larger SEO budget to achieve their desired results, through wise investment, many small businesses will be able to obtain the benefits of effective SEO which can make a significant difference to their business.

Further Information

If you’d like to speak to use regarding our ability to design you a quality website or perhaps how to maximise the potential of your existing website, please give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.

We are a team of ten guys and girls, all with our different skills, this includes, web designers, programmers, SEO experts, graphic design, not forgetting accounts and admin. We created our first web site in 1998 when the web was in its infancy and since then we have offered web site design and web solutions to all types of businesses, organisations and individuals.